Hardly anyone wants to.talk about what's likely to be the largest transfer of income and real wealth to the top of the scale -- for the second time in eleven years. (Millenials got wiped.out twice by a once in a lifetime recession.)
There are political reasons for that, but here's a pretty good ins utional one:
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/t...hy-wall-streetThree weeks ago, the government passed a giant multi-trillion dollar bailout. Supposedly, it was money for a host of stakeholders, including hospitals, states, Wall Street banks, big business, the unemployed, and small businesses. Today the Federal Reserve built on top of Congress’s framework, announcing yet another multi-trillion dollar set of facilities, on top of what it already put out, to help cities, states, small businesses, main street businesses, and so on and so forth.
So what has happened so far? This is today’s change in stock price of a real estate venture run by one of largest private equity funds in the world.
A thirty five percent jump in a day is… a lot. The reason the stock skyrocketed is because investors believe the new measures from the Federal Reserve will bailout the debt of this private equity fund. There’s a ‘monetary bazooka’ aimed at the economy. And yet there’s a puzzle. If there’s money for the entire economy, why is that normal people and small businesses can’t access unemployment insurance and lending programs? To put it another way, why is the money meant for everyone only showing up in the stock market?
The reason is because money has to travel through ins utions, and right now, the ins utions for the powerful function well, and those for the rest of us are rickety and broken. So money gets to the rich first. Eventually, some money will get to the rest of us, but in the interim period before that money fully circulates, the wealthy can use their access to money to buy up physical or financial assets.
The anti-democratic Cons ution is, by the conservative movement, a dead do ent, archaic, anachronism, ed up, weaponized, violated in spirit.
Any changes will be blocked by textualists, originalists. The dead Cons ution can never (effectively) be changed.
However, the Cons ution can be annulled completely by a Article V Convention of the States, which near to being approved by 2/3 of the states.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-11-2020 at 09:00 PM.
Eh, I doubt strict textualists/originalists really ever existed. Judicial philosophies take a backseat to expediency often enough to create serious doubt about how seriously judges actually take philosophy.
yep, eg the troll Scalia was orginalist/textualist when it suited his politics, his politics overriding any bull about the law.
Just throwing this out there, other countries have avoided mass unemployment by having the government take over payroll obligations.
Mass unemployment in the USA was a political choice.
Obviously
To the global work machine, people have no value apart from their economic productivity. The US being indued with this twisted economic ideology worse than anyone, citizens asked not to work by their government are last in line for help; they have joined the ranks of worthless spongers.
Not bailing out the USPS was so important to Trump he threatened to veto the CARES Act if it directed any money to the post office.
Countries like Canada actually give a about the people. In the US only capital matters.
Stoller and Bill Black, great writers and popularizers explaining the disaster of Capital ing non-Capitalists
San Antonio Food Bank Feeds Unprecedented Numbers as Need Surges
https://therivardreport.com/san-anto...s-need-surges/
Will there be any help from bag Abbott in hole Texas? From bag Trash?
Are there any evangelicals in the Food Bank's enormous queues still believing one is poor because God doesn't like you as a bad person?
Just he your money to multi-millionaire grifter teevee pastors and it will be returned "100-fold"
I would say people have been endangered, impoverished and made to suffer needlessly by sluggish political leadership and COVID-19 policies grossly inadequate to human needs, but it can't be ruled out the cruelty and indifference to ordinary people are a feature, not a bug. Incompetence and half-assedness of COVID-19 policy couldn't be better designed to keep us fearful, desperate, and dependent on our political and economic masters like never before. Trump wants US citizens to struggle and suffer. It will give the uber-rich yet another chance to acquire wealth and properry at fire sale prices. Also, his base seems to get off on it. That inequality and structural racism are co-morbidities for non-whites sauces the dish.
If US business and political leadership ask us all to take a pay cut and throttle the commons (austerity) at the end of this to bring the USA more in line with global capital requirements ("compe iveness"), nothing would be less surprising.
Last edited by Winehole23; 04-12-2020 at 08:47 AM.
To keep Labor subservient, enslaved to debt, enslaved to tty jobs for ty, Capital disempowers Labor (unions busted), keeps Labor in a state of financial precarity.
What's happening now is what happened in the Banksters Great Depression, Capital is giving Labor an unforgettable lesson about who is The Man, that Labor is powerless, insignificant, expendable.
From Barry Ritholtz, a bit of financial advice and a couple of links to help navigate bailout opportunities:
• Will I Get A Check From The US Government, And How? Here’s Everything You Need To Know. (Buzzfeed)
• 10 Sources of Emergency Cash, Ranked from Best to Worst (Morningstar)
• Coronavirus unemployment guide: What to do if you get laid off or furloughed (Washington Post)
Last edited by Winehole23; 04-12-2020 at 11:12 AM.
Bob Rodriguez thinks price discovery is dead and capital markets are totally manipulated in this brand new era of unlimited QE and MMT.
Since 2013, I have been preparing for an economy of monumental excess, where debt and deficits do not appear to matter, along with Fed and other central bank monetary policies that totally distort the fundamental elements of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. With the events of the past three weeks, the perversion and conversion to a dystopian capital market and economic system is virtually complete.As for me, with the yesterday’s Fed announcement of unlimited QE and its “will buy or support almost anything,” along with the pending passage of a $2-2.5 trillion stimulus package, this is the end of the capital markets as we have known them. We have now entered unlimited QE and MMT where there is no escape. It is the Roach Motel all over again. In Chairman Bernanke‘s 2010 Washington Post op-ed, he argued that QE would lead to a virtuous economic cycle; therefore, the Fed would eventually be able to exit from its QE operations. I argued that once initiated, a reversal would be impossible. It would be like the Roach Motel, “You can check in, but you cannot check out.”
With the initiation of the Fed’s complete takeover and control of the US financial economy, there is now absolutely no accurate pricing discovery in the capital markets and we have entered a period of total manipulation. In light of this, the only markets I have an interest in are those where the heavy hand of government is not involved or only minimally involved. This leads me to rare commodities and collectibles. The public equity and debt markets are now nothing more than greater fool markets that are led by the greatest fools of all, the Fed and the Congress. US capital markets, RIPhttps://www.advisorperspectives.com/...ew-world-orderDespite my having avoided 100% of the market carnage and also being profitable, I have to shed a tear for the passing of a capital market that has benefitted the real and financial economy so well for decades. In 2008, when I wrote, “Crossing the Rubicon,” I argued we had crossed over into a new economic order and system. Little did I know that within twelve short years this transformation would be virtually complete. We have entered into a far more dangerous environment where normal rules of analytics will likely not apply. When everything is essentially socialized as to risk, a return vs risk evaluation is essentially meaningless since the risk side of the equation has been truncated. Over a period of time which I cannot estimate yet, I will continue my preparation for a far different economic and financial environment. Capital deployment strategies will likely have to change from what has been the norm in the post WW2 environment. We are in a New World Order.
Private equity is wrecking hospitals and ripping us off for bailout money
https://popular.info/p/how-private-e...g-the-pandemic
In 2017, Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm, acquired Easton Hospital, a facility located in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, north of Philadelphia. Shortly after acquiring the hospital, Cerberus, through its Steward Health Care subsidiary, sold the property (but not the hospital itself) to a real estate investment firm, Medical Properties Trust.
Easton Hospital’s property was packaged with seven other hospitals, which netted Cerberus $304 million. But now Easton Hospital had to pay rent to operate on the land it had owned for the last 127 years.
Although the precise details are not public, it’s also likely that Cerberus saddled Easton Hospital with much of the debt it used to acquire the hospital. Typically, a private equity buyout “includes debt financing in the range of 50 percent to 70 percent of the purchase price, which the acquisition, in this case Easton Hospital, is expected to repay.”
So, for the last few years, Easton Hospital was forced to divert a significant portion of its revenue to paying rent and the debt imposed on it by Cerberus. Not surprisingly, it’s financial condition worsened.
On March 22, as the pandemic shut down much of the nation and put a premium on hospital capacity, Cerberus sent a letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf demanding the state assume “all operating expenses and liabilities of Easton Hospital” or the company would “proceed immediately on planning to close the facility.”
I got mine through direct deposit today.
It's the quickest way.
another Scalia BAG
Eugene Scalia, Trump's Labor Secretary, comes under fire for making life harder for the unemployed
Scalia slammed for "de able" efforts to roll back unemployment benefits and paid leave in coronavirus stimulus
From his guidance
rolling back paid leave benefits to his attempt to
limit who qualifies for beefed up unemployment insurance,
the former corporate lawyer's handling of the new law
favors businesses over people in desperate need of assistance.
"has used his department's authority over new laws enacted by Congress to
limit who qualifies for joblessness assistance and
to make it easier for small businesses not to pay family leave benefits,"
ripped Scalia's "de able" management of the CARES Act, which temporarily expands relief for the unemployed.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is using his authority to limit who qualifies for assistance," Cohen wrote.
"This is de able. We are in the midst of a pandemic!"
the Labor Department's lack of urgency in rolling out the benefits and,
Scalia issued guidance earlier this week that
aims to "make it more difficult for gig workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers to get benefits."
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/12/eugene-scalia-trumps-labor-secretary-comes-under-fire-for-making-life-harder-for-the-unemployed_partner/
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/a...all-businessesIronically, hedge funds are designed to employ as few people as possible so star traders don’t have to share millions of dollars in fees. The industry gets its name from the premise it can generate gains even when markets fall.
The question of whether to partake in the program is dividing members of the money management community. Some traders have called it morally corrupt, while others insist they are small businesses -- just like hair salons, restaurants and dry cleaners -- that could use a helping hand after global markets tumbled and cost them money.
"Some traders have called it morally corrupt"
so the corrupt, venal, predatory, immoral, unethical, destructive assholes WON'T take the morally corrupt free money? G M A F B
What would suck is if the amount of money they have on deposit causes the banks to give them preferential treatment. So this hedge fund is getting bailout $ while a mom and pop has to hope there's some leftover.
And let's not ignore the fact that even businesses that are making $ in this environment are still applying for, and receiving free money.
Per the Cantillon effect, money will flow the quickest and best to those with existing relationships to financial ins utions and the government itself.
Congress bunkered down til May while Americans struggle to pay rent and bills.
Trump's leadership during the pandemic jas already neen catastrphic; the reluctance of the US Congress to help out is making it worse.
https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/2985041001
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